Clinton murder threats: forest for the trees

In some respects the threats to imprison or even kill Hillary Clinton emanating from the Trump camp are bitterly ironic.

Much though any civilised Western observer should be horrified by such threats, they are the logical outcome of a power granted to the President in 2001. The power to order the assassination of anyone anywhere.

That power is contained in the statute arising from the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001)), and in the practices to which this statute has since been suborned without challenge, including especially by President Obama. Whose Secretary of State was not shy about issuing threats that turned into deaths.

It seems murder when employed against people branded terrorists is fine. And if that kind of murder is fine, why would someone whose definition of terrorism doesn’t concur with Washington rhetoric not follow that lead?

To me this looks like the chickens of imperial overreach coming home to roost.

Maybe the whole issue of violence in America, including gun violence, has to be addressed first by the state itself not being quite to quick and ready with its own direction of violence against the world and its own citizens.

Conversely, why is it that this signal violence is always so slow and hesitant when threats of domestic terrorism come from white men?